-
Radio Based cell phones
Later, during the First World War, the German military tested wireless phones on military trains running between Berlin and Zossen. Later, in 1924, wireless phones were tested on trains running between Berlin and Hamburg. -
Period: to
History of mobile phones
-
The World’s First Cell Phone
The world’s first cell phone was launched in 1983. It was the Motorola DynaTAC 800x. It was priced at around $4,000 and lasted for 30 minutes of talk time before dying. It was also about the size of a foot long sub from Subway. -
AT&T’s Mobile Telephone Service
In 1949, AT&T launched something called Mobile Telephone Service. We mentioned this service above as part of the automobile cell phone section. This Mobile Telephone Service was initially only available in St. Louis. By 1948, however, the service was available in about 100 towns. -
Russia’s First Cell Phone
Between 1957 and 1961, Soviet inventor Leonid Kupriyanovich developed a number of mobile phones that looked surprisingly similar to modern mobile devices. One of Leonid’s phones weighed just 70 grams and could easily fit into the palm of your hand. -
The First Mobile Telephone Call is Made
In 1973, 10 years before a cell phone was first released onto the market, the first cell phone call was made by Motorola researcher and executive Martin Cooper. Cooper, from Motorola, placed a call to Dr. Joel Engel of Bell Labs. -
Nokia 6110
Rumor has it this phone could survive a nuclear explosion. You could throw this phone off buildings, drop it on the floor, and nothing seemed to phase it. It also had a whopping three (!) games, including the ever-popular Memory, Snake, and Logic. Oh, and did I mention it worked as a pager and came in four different colors? Yeah, this phone was a big deal. -
Samsung SGH-T100
Samsung’s early phones looked nothing like the modern day Galaxy lineup. They looked like average clamshell phones. But they already showed early signs of Samsung’s future smartphone dominance: like a bright, vibrant screen. The Samsung SGH-T100 was the first phone to ever use a thin-film transistor active matrix LCD screen. -
Apple iPhone 3G
This is the phone that changed the game forever. Do we really need to say anything about the iPhone that you don’t already know? The iPhone introduced millions of people to apps, made touchscreen interfaces the norm, and had the most attractive design of any mobile released to date. -
Galaxy Nexus
Prior to the Nexus, Android was a little-used operating system in development from Google. After the Nexus, Android was a competitor to iOS in the mobile operating system world. The Nexus was the first good Android smartphone and was a strong predecessor to one of the most popular Androids of all time – the Galaxy S3. -
Samsung Galaxy Note
The Galaxy Note is on this list because Samsung had the foresight to build a stupidly large smartphone. We all thought it was stupidly large at the time, but a few years later, the Note’s 5.3-inch screen is on the lower end of larger smartphone displays. Samsung was making phablets before it was cool.
